Falling into Forever (Falling into You) (6 page)

I lunge for the phone, but before I can reach it,
he gives me one last evil look and touches the glowing green button.

“I’m going to kill you,” I mouth at him.

“What a way to go,” he mouths back, handing the phone to me.

My mother’s voice
is an alarming screech. “HALLIE VIOLA CALDWELL! You have broken my heart. If you think that you can just traipse off with some boy you don’t even know into the depths of Eastern Europe, where you’ll probably be turned into a prostitute by the Russian mafia, you have another thing coming. You will take the next flight back to Greenview and enroll in the Philosophy of Confucius class that we discussed, along with statistics. No more questions, no more complaints.”

She
’s picked up the conversation just where we left it the last time I talked to her. It isn’t a good sign.

“Mom.”

“Your father would be turning over in his grave if he knew that you were wasting all of your intellectual resources in order to go play house on some movie set with some boy. However, it’s not too late. There’s probably even still time for you to sign up for that history course covering Marxist theory and its role in shaping modern thought and the course of history.”

I glare at Chri
s, who’s laughing and pointing his finger at me. I flip him off and try one last plea with my mother.

“Mom,
I won’t have to read about history. I’ll be living it. Prague has…”

“Prague has some boy who’s bewitched my impressionable daughter with his good looks and empty charm. I looked up a picture of this boy on the internet, Hallie, and
he has a salacious look about him. He will ruin you. Mark my words.”

I sigh
. There’s no way she’s going to let me get off the phone without another lecture. I keep talking. Better me than her.

“
Mom, I am not impressionable. Why does everyone always think that? ‘Hallie’s so innocent. Hallie’s naïve.’ I am a grown woman. An adult in the eyes of the law.”

I’m
laying it on a little thick, but I need to get out of this call alive. I ignore my mother’s snort and try another tactic.

“I am going to Prague.
My whole life, Mom, I’ve always done everything that you wanted. I was the editor of the newspaper. I was even in that stupid musical. I went to Greenview, because it was your favorite school out of all the ones that I applied to. I took the dance lessons. Now, I want to do something for me. I want to go to Prague. I want to explore the city. I want to see Europe. I want to do all of the things that you and Dad did, once upon a time. If I remember correctly, you once dropped out of school for two whole years to hang out on a beach in Ibiza, selling homemade jewelry. Remember? You both used to say those were the best days of your lives. And I’m not going to be selling jewelry. I’ll be going to school.”

I get only a
nother dissatisfied grunt. I thought maybe the reference to her own youthful indiscretions might work. Apparently not. I’m running out of options here.

Chris,
who’s been listening this whole time with his hand over his mouth to cover his laughter, whispers over my shoulder.

“Let me talk to her.”

I stare at him and shake my head violently. With a naughty look in my direction, he grabs the phone and ducks into the bathroom, shutting the door between the two of us. I’m still pounding away furiously when he reemerges a minute later.

“We’re all set.
At the very least, she’s not planning on calling in a kidnapping charge to the authorities, which would definitely be more than a minor inconvenience.”

I gape. “How did you manage that?”

“I dazzled her with my salacious charm.”

I punch him in the arm. “Christopher, that’s really not funny. Seriously, what did you say to her?”

“I started by carefully outlining the course offerings at Greenview’s partner university. I delved into the bountiful array of cultural experiences in Prague. I waxed poetically about music and art for a while.”

I stare
at him. There’s something he isn’t saying. He sighs.

“And we’re going to see her tomorrow. Well, tonight, actually. I told
her we would hop the next flight out. She requested at least three or four hours for a full-on inspection.”

For a minute, I
think that it’s some kind of really sick joke, so I start laughing. Then, I look more closely into his face and realize that he’s serious.

“No. No way.
Nope. Not going to happen. You honestly have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. You’ll regret it after three minutes. Three seconds. Maybe less.”

Chris
shakes his head and grins. “Why? You’re afraid that all of your deepest, darkest, childhood secrets will come out?”

That
hits a little too close to home, but I manage to force my facial muscles into a small smile. “I’m afraid your psyche will be permanently damaged. My mother is…” I try to find the right word. “Difficult.”

It
is a massive understatement. However, if we’re really going to Ohio, he’ll see for himself soon enough.

“I’m good with difficult parents.
They find me charming.”

Of course
Chris would be good with parents. It made what I knew was about to happen with my mother seem slightly comical.

“We’ll see.”

He grins cockily. “No, you’ll see.”

“Confident much?”

“It worked on you, didn’t it?”

“I’m an easy target.”

He kisses
me gently before leaning back onto the pillows. “Sorry about Disneyland. At least you won’t have to worry about the impact of that particular brand of commercialism on your impressionable mind.”

“
I’m going to let that one go, even though it’s killing me a little bit to let you slide with your unfounded assumptions. But I am only letting you slide because I know that you are so not ready for my mother. I’m going to enjoy this one. I’m going to enjoy this one a lot.”

“
I so am ready for this. It’s really only fair. You got to see the baby pictures. Diana’s probably given you more unsavory information about my childhood than even I know.”

He
definitely doesn’t even know that I had seen the videos of him as Turkey #7 in the Thanksgiving play. But that’s neither here nor there.

“Chris, you don’t know my mother. This is going to turn into an intervention. It’s
a disaster waiting to happen. She’ll drag in the cavalry. And by the cavalry, I mean her fully stocked arsenal of verbal daggers. You really have no idea. It’s the worst. It’s a miracle that I escaped that house alive.”

But he has
n’t heard a word I’ve said, because his hands have already started to rove over my body as he starts to play with the top of my tank top. A smile flickers across his face as I make an undignified noise.

“We have at least an hour before we
need to get to the airport. That means…”

“That I have time to prepare you for the dragon lady?”

“That’s not exactly the direction that my mind was going in.” He lifts me effortlessly on top of him and drags his fingers through my tangled hair, gently finger-combing the knots, his eyes locked on mine. “I love you, Hallie. And if that means that I have to deal with the dragon lady once in a while, it’s worth it. Anything would be worth it.”

His lips meet mine hungrily, and I kiss him back, trying to forget that my mother is probably sharpening her knives.

“I love you, too.”

“Actions definitely speak
louder than words.” His voice is low and teasing, and I manage to extract myself for just a second to stare at him.

“You think you deserve a reward right now, huh?”

“I definitely deserve a reward right now. I’m about to meet your mother.”

I pretend to consider it for a moment before pouncing on him. “Just so that we make this very clear—I am not rewarding your behavior. This is pity sex. I pity you.”

“Hey. A guy’s gotta take what he can get.”

“You’re impossible.”

“So I’ve been told.”

I manage to hold him off for precisely one more second before he pulls me back under his spell.

Eight hours, a limousine, and a fancy private jet later (I harp on that one for a while and I’m ultimately just glad that my mother didn’t see it), we’re standing in my living room in Ohio. My mother flung open the door without a word to either of us, and she’s currently standing with her hands on her hips, staring at Chris through narrowed eyes.

She opens
her mouth to speak and I let out a little groan, because I certainly know what’s coming when she grabs a folder from the table next to the sofa. Besides Ben’s mother, her closest friend at work is a social studies teacher who does a little private investigation on the side. Her memory, while not photographic like Chris’s, is firmly sharpened after years of working as a researcher, so she doesn’t actually need the notes, but they make her look official and unapproachable. It’s clearly by design.

The litany of facts starts
. She and Chris are stuck in a stare-down as I look on powerlessly.

“Christopher Jensen. Parents are
Agnes and Harry Jensen. Agnes’s stage name is Lavinia Crawford, and she’s an actress of some repute, I suppose, on the New York stage. Your father is recently deceased. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Chris nod
s, but she continues, undeterred.

“Two sisters. One of them, a Diana Jensen, was a fairly successful
features editor of a women’s lifestyle magazine before she became a full-time caretaker. The other is in graduate school and studying sociology, which is a path I had once hoped my now-wayward daughter would travel.”

She
gives me a pointed look. I try my best to ignore it.

“Then, we come to you. Chris
topher Jensen. An actor.” She can barely disguise her disdain. I close my eyes and look down. “Three films completed. The most recent one is a modest box-office success. I had to use one of those pirate sites to view it. I generally consider the use of those to be a base form of stealing, but sometimes you have to do unsavory things in the spirit of hunting down information about the child who has apparently stolen
my
child away.”

Chris
is trying to hide the amusement on his face, but it’s unsuccessful. My mother gives a little harrumph as he nods again at her.

“It’s a poorly ma
de film, although you have a certain je nais se quoi, at least on the screen.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“It wasn’t a compliment, Mr. Jensen. The more recent tabloid stories focus on your most recently obtained role as James Ross, which I assume is the reason for your imminent Prague trip. There’s a string of flings with girls from Sampson Preparatory School, otherwise known as Sampson Prep, which you attended at different points during your high school years. You achieved middling grades, but excellent standardized test scores.”

Chris shrugs
.

“My least favorite kind of student. Gifted, but lazy. A tragedy, really.”

I would try to stop her, but she’s on a roll, and I know nothing that I could say could stop her now. It’s best to just let it run its course.

“None of that tells me why you’re interested in my daughter. None of
that tells me why my baby, who has always had a fiercely independent streak and once promised me that she would never change her priorities for a man, would lose her mind and decide to follow you to the ends of the earth.”

She stares
at Chris expectantly. He draws in a breath and looks at me for a second before speaking.

“Mrs. Jensen, I wholeheartedly understand that you’re upset
about the fact that Hallie will be taking a brief break from Greenview. However, coming with me to Prague won’t affect her studies at all. Study abroad programs look excellent on a resume, and before even asking her to come with me, I made sure that nothing would happen to her standing at school.”

I stare at him in amazement. He hadn’t told me that.
I had just jumped headfirst into being with him, assuming he had done the same. Instead, he had thought, planned, calculated. I should have realized it when registering for classes in Prague required nothing more than signing a few forms and transferring my scholarship, but I had just accepted it, without questioning. I want to throw my arms around him, but another surreptitious glance at my mother tells me that it would be a very bad idea, indeed.

I see Chris take control
, adjusting his vocabulary and the tone of his voice to match my mother’s. I’ve seen him do it before; when he talks to Marcus, there are more “fucks” and “shits” and his normally musical voice becomes brisker, more urgent. It amazes me every time, that adaptability. I don’t have it. Instead, I’ll always be bumbling Hallie, words coming out in spurts and gasps.

He
gives her a quick grin, the same one that charmed me, the one that will soon charm millions of preteen and teen girls and middle-aged women all over the planet. My mother, on the other hand, just continues to glower at him.